My semester has begun to rapidly unravel. I am in so much pain from Monday's fitness class I don't even want to go tomorrow.

And every time I ask my online instructors for clarification I'm left wondering what the hell they are even talking about.

The exact question I must answer for Soc is "How does social differentiation allow for population growth?"

I emailed him regarding this and a few of the many variations I see worldwide in impoverished nations having higher birth rates than most Western societies, so I don't see how how social differentiation as he defined it (variation of skill in the workplace) much contributes to global population growth, at least directly, outside of healthcare, resources, and technology that exist mainly for rich people in the West where birthrates once boomed and now are leveling off or decreasing due to things like non-rich people having to work 3 jobs just to pay rent and bills.

But then the end of his reply to me states this:

"All this complexity, which we can go on and on about, is beyond the simple scope of what I am looking for from you; namely the ability to articulate the stresses put on a population when resources become scarce and competition for those existent resources intensifies.

If I reply with that, how does it answer how social differentiation allows for population growth? Besides the fact that he didn't once mention lacking resources in a society in the entirety of his lecture. And the only thing he stated about differentiation and population growth that in any way answers his question is this, and I am assuming he means the U.S.: "We have an abundance of food. And people have children so that they can consume that food"...and yes that is a direct quote.

So, with that logic, that we only pop em out so we increase or maintain mindless consumerism, he must mean that if there was no or less food (like oh say in Africa) people would just stop having sex and getting pregnant because there wouldn't be enough food for the children to consume it?

I sincerely want to drop out right now. I am also in another fight regarding accessibility in my online courses because there are many aspects that aren't accessible to me, and I am feeling ill already.

I likely cannot do the club and will lose $74 of club raised funds, and I just want to disappear again. I fear though that I will weigh 165 by May if I do that after stress adds another 15 lbs to my gut.

I want to write more but I need to get my things together for tomorrow.

I am not doing squats tomorrow. Today I almost fell down my stairs from my knees being floppy after the 40+ squats she made us do over 15 minutes time interspersed with equally painful moves on Monday. It's not funny.

~e